


the end of history as we know it

by idrilka



Series: in medias res [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Accidental Cohabitation, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, good at skating; bad at most other things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 18:31:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10747407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/pseuds/idrilka
Summary: At the beginning of May, Otabek packs up his apartment in downtown Montreal and ships all of his belongings across the ocean, to a little place in Saint Petersburg in the Admiralty District. Yuri picks him up at the airport twenty eight hours later.(Or: Otabek moves to Saint Petersburg to train under a new coach. It's not the only relationship he needs to figure out.)





	the end of history as we know it

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to _i walk my days on a wire_ that follows directly after _you catch on like a bonfire_ , timeline-wise. Because this idea just refused to leave my head, and the exploration of how long-distance relationships transform into close-quarters type of arrangements is really interesting to me.   
>  As always, huge thanks to radialarch for beta, brainstorming and not killing me over my convoluted sentences.

Otabek ends things with his coach just after Worlds. 

He placed third in Lyon—not a bad result by any means, and together with his two silvers from the Grand Prix Final and Four Continents, people would be hard-pressed to say it was a disappointing season for Otabek. He kept regularly beating his personal bests all season. At Skate America, he almost brushed against Katsuki’s world record in the short program and fell short by only 0.02 points.

It still doesn’t surprise him when Olivier sits him down after they come back to Montreal, the phantom weight of the bronze medal hanging around Otabek’s neck.

He doesn’t think there’s anything left that he can teach Otabek, he tells him. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them if he didn’t come out and say it. 

There’s a young coach in Saint Petersburg who could be a good fit for him, he tells him. Then he gives Otabek a number and an email address. 

 

When he first meets her face to face a week later, jetlagged after a flight from Montreal with a five-hour layover in Frankfurt, Polina Voronova greets him with a confident handshake and asks him to sit down. 

She’s petite—almost a head shorter than Otabek, and skinny enough that he could lift her without much problem, even though he’s not exactly built for it. No wonder she went into pair skating. 

“I’ll admit, this was the one phone call I was not expecting,” she says with a smile, folding her hands on the table that separates them. She asked to meet at a coffee shop just off the Nevsky Prospekt instead of the rink, and Otabek thinks he understands why. Neutral ground. 

She looks every inch the professional she is—honest and open yet ever so slightly detached, maintaining distance. Otabek had been through enough coaches in the past to recognize that exterior which usually melts away with time as they grow closer in their partnership, but there’s something else, too. It’s not like Polina has nothing to prove, after all.

He’s not so vain as to think it’s only about him and his talent.

“No, I don’t imagine it was,” Otabek says. “But there’s no bad blood between me and Olivier, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re not stealing me away. In fact, he was the one who referred me to you.”

Polina regards him for a moment with scrutiny. From where they’re standing, it’s easy to forget that she’s only seven years older than him. 

“That’s a big move,” she says, watching him like she’s trying to gauge his reaction. “From Montreal to Russia.”

Otabek doesn’t look away. He’s not one to back away from a challenge. “I moved across continents before. Changed coaches more than once.” A pause. “And Saint Petersburg is much closer to home.”

He doesn’t mention the other thing. 

 

At the beginning of May, Otabek packs up his apartment in downtown Montreal and ships all of his belongings across the ocean, to a little place in Saint Petersburg in the Admiralty District. Yuri picks him up at the airport twenty eight hours later, after a delayed flight and a layover in Munich. It’s early in the morning, but still late enough that Otabek knows Yuri should be at practice. 

“Yakov gave me the morning off to haul your sorry ass home, even though you’re a fucking traitor. Now come on, before the goddamn Angels find out I’m here,” he says by way of hello before Otabek even has a chance to ask. Then he pulls Otabek close and kisses him, face obscured by the hood of his animal print jacket. 

If he was trying to be inconspicuous, maybe he should’ve reconsidered his choice of clothing, but Otabek won’t be the one to tell him that. 

Outside the arrivals terminal, Otabek gives the driver the address that he needs a moment to remember, hesitating over the building number. Next to him, Yuri is sprawling comfortably across the seat, surprisingly unbothered by the early hour, even though usually he doesn’t stop being exceptionally cranky before nine a.m. For all his work ethic, Yuri has never been a morning person, and it takes more than fifty minutes to get to Pulkovo from where he lives; he must have gotten up around five to get there on time.

“Thanks,” Otabek says in a quiet voice. Yuri turns his head to the side to look at him. “For coming to get me,” he explains. “Even though I’m a traitor.”

His mouth twitches when Yuri slaps him in the center of his chest with the back of his hand.

“I still can’t fucking believe you went to some coach at Yubileyny instead of Yakov,” Yuri says, looking up at the roof of the car. “You know he would’ve taken you in, I could’ve asked him— He wouldn’t say _no_ to me.”

They’ve had this conversation before. Otabek knows that it’s a sore spot for Yuri—his decision to train under Polina instead of Yakov—but the fact that Yakov probably wouldn’t have said _no_ if Yuri had asked was precisely why Otabek could never agree to that arrangement. If he even wanted Yakov as a coach in the first place. It’s enough that some people will still think he moved here for what they consider essentially an extended booty call. It’s not like he doesn’t read Deadspin. Maybe that’s his first mistake right there.

Once they reach their destination, Yuri helps Otabek haul his luggage up the front stairs and into the elevator, then leaves him in front of the door to his new apartment with a kiss to the corner of Otabek’s mouth. 

“I actually gotta go back to the rink or Yakov is gonna skin me alive,” he says. Otabek looks at him with confusion until Yuri rolls his eyes and huffs, stuffing his hands inside the pockets of his hoodie. “I told you he gave me the morning off. I never told you he was happy about it. He’s an old geezer; I better go back before he gets a coronary or something.”

“I’ll see you later, right?” Otabek says as Yuri turns around to go. Yuri looks back at him over his shoulder.

“Sure,” he says. “Don’t fall asleep or you’ll fuck up your sleep schedule even more.”

Otabek is almost tempted to say, _I love you too_.

 

Three days after moving to Saint Petersburg, Otabek packs another suitcase and leaves his new apartment to gather dust for a month as he tours with Stars on Ice all over Europe and Asia. 

His place is a mess of unpacked boxes and random luggage while he’s waiting for the rest of his belongings to arrive. He’s pretty sure he’s missing some clothes, too, but he might have left them back at Yuri’s apartment when he stayed over a few nights in a row. 

Masha is still in Montreal, getting spoiled rotten by Olivier’s children, until Otabek comes back from the tour.

Four weeks of shows that take them all around the globe are initially a nice change of pace, then just another routine by the end of the tour. Otabek, who had been invited only to the European leg of the tour in the past few years, can feel himself getting stretched thin by the time they reach Tokyo, their last venue. He’s not the only one—even Yuri, who usually steamrolls through life the way he does with everything else that stands in his way, is quiet and pinched around the eyes.

The day after the final show finds him at the Narita International Airport, waiting with the Russian team for their flight back to Moscow. It’s roughly ten hours from Narita to Sheremetyevo, but with their internal clocks thrown completely off by weeks of travelling and constant change of time zones, Otabek knows it’s going to feel at least twice as long.

In the next seat, Yuri is dozing off with his head on Otabek’s shoulder, earbuds in and music loud enough to wake the dead blaring from his phone. How he can sleep like that is still a mystery to Otabek, but he has learned not to question some things where Yuri is concerned. 

“Hey, Altin, catch.” Otabek looks up just in time to reach out and catch the granola bar Mila throws his way. When he raises his brows in a questioning gesture, she shrugs and says, “They were on sale, two for the price of one. Make sure sleeping princess over there eats something; he’s been running on coffee and spite since we left the hotel.”

He’s still not entirely sure where he stands with the rest of Yakov’s skaters. There’s the bizarre rivalry between their clubs; then there’s the fact that he still barely knows Mila and Georgi, despite the four weeks spent in their company. It all leaves him with the impression that they prefer to keep their distance now that Otabek is something more than the nebulous concept of Yuri’s boyfriend who lives half a world away.

“I’m not his minder,” Otabek says, but he smiles with the corner of his mouth.

Mila snorts. “That’s what we all tell ourselves.”

 

Saint Petersburg welcomes them with a heat wave that rolls through the city like molasses, slow and sticky, leaving the air above the asphalt trembling with heat.

The four of them spill out of the train at the Moskovsky Station and drag their luggage over to the cabs standing at the curb.

“Whatever, I don’t care, I’ll pay for it,” Yuri says when Otabek proposes they take the metro instead. “It’s rush hour. The metro is gonna be packed, we have a fuckton of luggage, and I’m too tired to deal with this shit.”

“Let’s go to my place, then, save some time and some money on the fare,” Otabek suggests while Yuri gets into the taxi, leaving his luggage on the sidewalk for the driver to deal with. 

“Fine,” Yuri says as soon as Otabek joins him in the overheated cab. “But I’m not unpacking shit today. Your mess will have to wait until tomorrow. And you’re paying for food.”

His apartment, when they come in, feels hot and humid, and full of dust. It feels nothing like home, but then again, new apartments never do. Otabek has moved from one place to another often enough to know it will eventually pass. He just needs to give it some time.

Yuri shoulders his way past Otabek to drop their luggage by the pile of boxes in what’s supposed to be the bedroom and surveys the room critically. 

“Where the hell is your bed?” he asks, looking over his shoulder. 

Otabek comes to stand behind him and wraps an arm around his waist, pressing his face into the crook of Yuri’s neck. They both smell like stale air and sweat. Yuri’s hair is a mess. 

“They wouldn’t have managed to deliver it before I had to leave,” Otabek explains. Then he gestures to the space beyond the boxes and adds, “There’s a mattress.”

Yuri scoffs. “And where the hell am I supposed to sleep?”

Otabek hides his smile against Yuri’s skin where his neck meets shoulder. “I guess we’re just going to have to sleep very close to each other.” 

He manages to move back before Yuri’s elbow connects with his abdomen, but only just.

“Do you at least have a shower?” Yuri asks. He does have a point, Otabek must admit. They’re both sticky and sweaty after the long flight and four hours on a train, smelling like recycled air. 

“Over that way.” Otabek gestures with his hand and moves to the side to let Yuri pass. Yuri whistles when he turns the light on and sees the interior of the bathroom. 

“How sick is your endorsement money that you can afford _this_ ,” he says in a flat tone, looking over his shoulder at Otabek, who just laughs despite himself. Yuri, of all people, should know that skating doesn’t pay that well unless your name is Victor Nikiforov. Or Yuuri Katsuki, as it turns out.

“I got a good deal on it. Polina knows the owner.”

He watches as Yuri’s expression sours. It’s hard to tell what it’s really about—Polina, the Yubileyny rivalry, the fact that maybe Yuri wanted to be the one to help Otabek find an apartment in Saint Petersburg, even though he still lives in the same place he started renting with Mila after he’d moved out of Lilia’s house. Maybe it’s about all of those things. 

“You can have the first shower,” Otabek says, breaking the silence. “I’ll go buy some groceries.”

It’s still the off-season, which means there’s some leeway for takeout, but Yuri follows his diet to the letter and he’d already made an exception for the Katsuki family home cooking when they visited the onsen after the Fukuoka show. 

When Otabek comes back with the groceries twenty minutes later, Yuri is just coming out of the shower, completely and shamelessly naked. His hair is a damp, golden weight on his shoulder. 

Otabek would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the fact that Yuri has let his hair grow out over the past few years, even though he threatens to cut it all off at least once a week. It’s fascinating, Otabek thinks, the way he almost looks like he’s trying to recreate himself in Victor’s image while at the same time running away from it. The most incredible thing is that he actually succeeds. 

For all that he’s grown into himself in Victor’s shadow and under his tutelage, there’s remarkably little left of Victor in Yuri. He might be the face of the next generation of figure skating in Russia, but he’s doing that on his own terms—it’s not so much passing the torch as lighting a new one.

Otabek knows a thing or two about what it’s like, except he doesn’t have the weight of legacy resting firmly on his shoulders, bearing down on him. The kind of pressure he’s under is of a different nature—the sort that either crushes you to dust or forges diamonds.

It’s still difficult to say which one it will be for him.

 

Once they settle in, Yuri sleeps for eleven hours, then blows Otabek lazily, bent over him on the narrow mattress in a position that can’t be doing his spine any favors. Otabek usually tries to squash the maudlin tendencies that rise in him from time to time, but he can’t help thinking of a different summer and a different room on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Can’t help thinking how different Yuri had been back then, all bravado and stubborn determination to make up for the lack of skill.

This Yuri here still bristles at the world more often than not, too stubborn for his own good, but they’re both older now, if not necessarily wiser. Whatever storms had been raging inside them in the middle of the haze of hormones and growing up finally abated—somewhat, at least.

“Your turn,” Yuri says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. When Otabek kisses him, he can still taste the salty bitterness of himself on Yuri’s tongue. 

Otabek returns the favor, pinning Yuri to the mattress with a hand to the center of his chest. He can feel the muscle shifting beneath the skin, coiled like a spring. That’s Yuri all over—lithe and strong, and lethal. 

It’s barely light outside, but too late to go back to sleep. They’re both accustomed to early alarms and watching the sun rise from the wrong end of the night; it’s a habit that’s hard to shake even in the face of persisting jetlag. 

“Wanna go for a run?” he asks after he’s made Yuri come in his mouth, stretching on the mattress until he feels his joints pop. 

Yuri tucks himself back into his underwear and yawns while Otabek smothers a smile. It’s nice to know that Yuri Plisetsky is capable of being a cliché in some way. 

“Like hell,” Yuri says but forces himself up all the same. “We probably should, though. Don’t know about you, but I’m going back to practice tomorrow.”

“I’m flying out to Lausanne in a week to work on my free skate with Guillaume,” Otabek says, reaching for a discarded t-shirt. He sniffs it before putting it on—it’s probably due a wash soon, but they’re going running and whatever he decides to wear, he’ll have to wash it afterwards anyway.

“I still can’t believe you let Giacometti talk you into letting his fucking boyfriend choreograph for you,” Yuri spits out. 

Otabek shrugs and gets up to rummage around his drawers for shorts. “He’s a good choreographer,” he says, digging through underwear. It’s the only thing he unpacked that first day—underwear and athletic gear. Says a lot about his life, he supposes. “Polina actually recommended him. Not everyone can have Victor Nikiforov choreographing for them, you know.”

Not everyone would want to. This, Otabek guesses, is something Yuri has yet to understand. That not everyone would want to be coached by Yakov Feltsman, as good as the man is. That not everyone would want the legendary Victor Nikiforov—a legacy unto himself—choreographing their routines.

Otabek is not one to shy away from a challenge—he wouldn’t be where he is if he were—but he wouldn’t want to sign up for a season of commentary that amounted to the discussion of what Victor Nikiforov could _really_ do with Otabek’s choreography if he performed it instead. It has never been a problem for Yuri, who’s had a habit of not giving a shit anyway, or for Katsuki, who’s carved out for himself a style entirely his own, but Otabek has spent enough time listening to people drone on about the wasted potential of Victor’s choreography for other skaters to know better.

“How long will you be gone?” Yuri asks, and the petulant edge in his voice has disappeared.

Otabek spares him a glance over the shoulder; there are no blinds in the room yet, and in the pale morning light, Yuri’s hair looks like a halo. 

“A week,” he says, bending down to lace his shoes. Yuri is still undressed, save for the underwear he slept in. His face is difficult to decipher and Otabek could swear he sees a flicker of something before it disappears into a scowl. “Are you coming or not?”

Yuri throws on a shirt with more fury than it really warrants, then reaches into his suitcase to look for running shorts. “Fine,” he says. “Last one to reach Tekhnologichesky Institut buys breakfast.”

 

He comes back from Lausanne rested and ready to work. For Otabek, doing choreography is always a chance to breathe more freely for a moment: try things out just for the sake of trying, with no obligation behind it. 

Christophe insisted he stay with him and Guillaume instead of booking a hotel room, so he spent the week working with Guillaume at the rink for most of the day and petting Christophe’s cat in the evenings while Yuri snapped him photos of Masha, who’d arrived in Saint Petersburg the day before Otabek was scheduled to fly out. In most of the pictures, she’s just been sleeping next to Koshka like a huge pile of incredibly lazy fur. 

His flight arrives in the late afternoon and he takes a Uber back to his apartment. Yuri should still be at the afternoon practice, and he’d texted earlier to tell Otabek he’d be coming by to bring Masha.

Coming back to his apartment still doesn’t equal coming home. Between all the trips and how much time he spends back at the rink otherwise, it’s hard to think about this place as really his own, when there’s nothing that visibly marks his presence or ownership. The walls are bare, and he has little in the way of knick-knacks, has moved often enough to never pick up the habit of buying things that could stand around gathering dust.

He leaves the suitcase by the front door and walks straight into the shower, undressing along the way. Just as he steps out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair dripping water down his neck and spine, there’s a knock on the door, and then another one, and then Yuri says in a loud voice, “Come on, Otabek, let me in! I got your cat with me and she’s heavy as fuck.”

Maybe he should get Yuri a second set of keys, Otabek thinks absentmindedly as he goes to open the door. It would be the practical thing to do, considering their schedules don’t always align.

At first, Masha tries to feign offense—to being left alone for so long with three little children, to being transported across the ocean in the dark hold of a plane, to being left alone _again_ with yet another stranger. It’s impossible to miss, though, the way she constantly gets underfoot, pretending to ignore Otabek while at the same time never letting him out of sight. 

“How was Switzerland?” Yuri asks, sprawling on the sofa with a lapful of cat. He keeps petting Masha while she sheds happily on everything in sight; clumps of fur are floating slowly in the air.

“It was good,” Otabek says. “The routine feels solid now, after we’ve run through it about a hundred times. I just have to tweak a few things, see what Polina says. What about yours?”

Yuri makes a face. Looks like the triple axel-quad toe-triple toe combination in the second half of his free skate is still giving him issues, then. Otabek understands the temptation, though—to be the first at something, write his name in the history of the sport in some way. He and Yuri are alike in this way, even if they’re different in almost everything else. Still, Otabek knows what it’s like to be hungry for winning, but sometimes it seems like Yuri has never known anything else.

“Victor is flying in in two weeks,” Yuri admits eventually. “I need to nail it before that. He’s sure I can land it, but I keep popping the quad after coming out of the triple axel. I’ve never seen Yakov so red in the face in his entire life, including back when Victor fucked off to Japan to coach Katsudon, but he doesn’t even yell anymore.” 

“I’m doing the flip,” Otabek says and observes the way Yuri’s eyes widen for a second. It’s not like he didn’t know Otabek has been working on it, but so far, only Victor and Yuuri have managed to land a clean quad flip in competition. Yuri had wanted to be the third. Otabek is keenly aware of that, but, ultimately, it changes nothing. All of them want to win and keep on winning. That’s why they’re here, doing what they do. “I land it most of the time in practice now, so we decided to include it. Polina agrees.”

Yuri looks half-annoyed, half-impressed. “Good,” he says at last. “I’m still going to kick your ass.”

Otabek laughs as the tension releases from his chest. “Good,” he echoes. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.” A pause. “What I mean is, you certainly can try.”

He wonders, sometimes, if one of these days Yuri is going to attempt a quad axel without a harness, just to stay ahead of the curve. He wouldn’t be surprised. Yuri doesn’t have the same compulsive need to surprise people the way Victor did, but he does have an obsessive drive to be the best. It’s not that unexpected—after all, all skaters want to win. The only difference is, for some of them, skating is a job. For Yuri, skating is his life.

 

Yubileyny is strangely quiet when he arrives for his morning practice the next day. Otabek likes to get in early, but so far, he’s never managed to be the first one to arrive apart from the maintenance crew. Usually by the time he comes in, Polina is in the office, sorting through training regimens for off-ice workouts, and her father is already rinkside, yelling at junior skaters who look barely awake and either murderous or ready to cry.

The silence of the empty rink is almost eerie as Otabek warms up before lacing up his skates and getting onto the ice. He does a few laps of lazy crossovers, listening to the familiar scrape of blades against the ice, unusually loud now that everything else is completely quiet. 

He’s running through his step sequence for the free skate when he hears a second pair of skates join him on the ice, the _scrape-scrape-scrape_ of it coming closer and closer. He skids to an abrupt stop and turns around.

“Have you seen Maxim?” Sasha asks, glowering at Otabek like he’s personally holding Maxim Voronov hostage. 

It’s hard to keep a straight face when all Otabek can think of is that Yuri certainly knows how to pick his rivalries. At eighteen, Sasha Lenkov is still an insufferable brat. Otabek can only imagine what he was like at fifteen. He doesn’t want to imagine what the FFKK had to do to keep the two of them in check.

“I was the first one here,” Otabek says instead, then brushes past him to reach the water bottle resting on the boards next to his guards and jacket. “Maybe there’s traffic; Polina isn’t here yet either.”

Sasha shoots him another dirty look, but the two years spent as Yuri’s boyfriend made Otabek completely immune to those. 

They skate off in different directions to work on their programs, but Otabek keeps glancing back every now and then, in between practicing his death drop for the combination spin in his free skate. On the other side of the rink, Sasha keeps popping his triple axel. 

“What?” he spits out eventually after he two-foots it again, but if he’s hoping to make Otabek feel embarrassed for catching him in the act, he’s in for a disappointment. Otabek doesn’t turn around and he doesn’t blush. Doesn’t pretend he saw nothing. “You gonna tell Plisetsky about it, give him something to laugh about?”

If Otabek wanted to be harsh, he could disabuse him of the notion that Yuri spends his waking hours thinking about Sasha at all. But this weird, lingering animosity has nothing to do with him, and he refuses to be dragged into it, Yuri’s boyfriend or not. 

Skaters are a dramatic bunch in general, and he feels that his life has just about enough drama. There’s no need to manufacture more.

“No,” he says simply, keeping his eyes on Sasha, who seems to stumble over the answer. “But you should watch the angle of your blade on the entry, that’s what keeps tripping you up. I had the same issues a couple years back,” he explains when Sasha keeps staring at him, visibly torn between annoyance and gratitude. “It’ll come back, just be patient.”

It’s not a thing you can relearn in a single morning; you need to train yourself out of the wrong habit and then drill the right technique back into your body, deep into the muscle and the bone, until there’s nothing more natural in the entire world. Otabek should know—he’s been there enough times to understand how this works. But he also remembers himself just a few years back, and the way he wanted everything intensely and immediately, too hot-headed to think straight.

The intensity of his wanting hasn’t waned, but if there’s anything his injury has taught him, it’s that some things take time.

Polina finally arrives at the rink fifteen minutes later, cursing up a storm. Her father comes in right behind her, immediately zeroing in on Sasha, who skates over as soon as he spots Maxim standing rinkside with a scowl on his face that rivals Yakov’s. 

“Sorry,” Polina says, bending down to re-tie her skates. “A pipe burst in the middle of the goddamn Bolshoy Prospekt and it was impossible to get through Petrogradsky that way. A traffic jam from hell as far as the eye can see.” She straightens up and gives him an appraising look, then fiddles with the sound system. “Okay, let’s take it from the top. I saw the video you sent me, but now I want to see the real thing.”

Otabek nods, then skates out to center ice and waits for the cue.

 

When Otabek was starting out in the novices, scraping the bottom of the barrel and trying to keep up with children with twice the natural talent and resources, everyone who was a fan of figure skating knew the name Polina Voronova. 

At sixteen, she was breaking world records with her partner, Artemyi Krupin, training under her father, the esteemed coach Maxim Voronov of the Yubileyny Sports Club, and was poised to become the youngest Olympic medalist in pair skating since Calgary.

At eighteen, she suffered an injury during training that effectively ended her competitive career. 

At nineteen, she was studying sports medicine at the Saint Petersburg State Medical Academy.

Now, at twenty-eight, she’s still trying to prove that, as a coach, she’s more than her father’s name and the echo of faded glory. It’s something that Otabek can respect and understand—the way she picked herself up and dusted herself off before moving on to do something she could be good at, even though it wasn’t what she’d originally envisioned for herself.

Back in the stuffy ballet studio at Yakov’s summer training camp, watching Yuri Plisetsky transform himself into a living work of art made of muscle and sinew and the steel in his bones, it seemed impossible. But when they found Otabek wanting, despite all the pain and sweat and tears, he still turned his back on ballet and said _no_ , and found another way. 

“Okay, let’s take five,” she tells him in the middle of practice, after he’s run through his free skate several times, making small adjustments to the choreography.

Otabek skates over to the boards and checks his phone as he downs his water until the bottle is completely empty. There’s a message from Yuri, asking to pick him up from Lilia’s studio once he’s done with the afternoon practice. Polina sidles up to him just as he finishes typing out his reply, and leans back against the boards. 

“Texting the boyfriend?” she teases, elbowing Otabek in the arm, then leans in to whisper, “Don’t let my father see you fraternizing with the enemy.”

If there’s one good thing about training under Polina instead of her father, it’s that she considers the rivalry with the Sports Champions Club just as bizarre and laughable as Otabek does.

There is a long line of former coaches in Otabek’s past to testify to the fact that it’s impossible to recreate one coach-student dynamic with another person. For some—especially those like Victor or Yuri, who have been with the same coach since the beginning—it’s an obstacle that’s difficult to overcome. For others—like Otabek, who’s had eight different coaches to date, everywhere from Almaty to Toronto—it’s yet another thing to get used to. 

He was with Olivier for five years—longer than any other coach, including his first instructor back in Almaty. That alone brings a degree of closeness that’s hard to replicate over less than a month, while travelling for choreographing sessions and touring with ice shows. It’s yet to be seen what kind of dynamic they settle into with Polina, but she’s different enough from Olivier that Otabek doesn’t turn around on the ice expecting to see another person.

Still, it’s an adjustment. 

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” Otabek says and puts his phone away. “He must have been there at last year’s Grand Prix Final.”

At last year’s Grand Prix Final, Yuri yanked Otabek forward by the silver hanging from his neck and kissed him in front of the cameras right after the medal ceremony, smashing their mouths together without much grace. Then, after the gala, Yuri dragged him into the men’s restroom during the banquet to suck him off in a locked stall with his hand clamped over Otabek’s mouth to keep him from making noise. 

“Congratulations,” Yuri said, still on his knees, looking up at him and wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. They almost got caught when, at that exact moment, Crispino walked in to wash his hands.

Maybe, Otabek decides, it’s time to reconsider ill-advised hookups in bathrooms at various ISU events, now that they live in the same city and see each other almost daily.

Polina laughs and pushes off the boards, then looks over her shoulder. “Come on,” she says just as Otabek follows her to center ice. “Back to work.”

 

Lilia’s ballet studio reminds him uncomfortably of Vaganova, the rooms cold and impersonal, the floor-length mirrors baring all deficiencies to the world. There’s no hiding in a place like this, and the scrutiny of the detached, appraising gaze of the glass is even now turning Otabek’s stomach inside out.

When he approaches the room at the end of the narrow corridor, the door is ajar and he sees Yuri at the barre, doing an arabesque penché, his arabesque leg extended at 180 degrees, toes pointed. Even Otabek, as rusty as he is at ballet technique, can see that his form is impeccable, leading with his leg instead of his upper body, his back held against the leg. 

It’s no wonder Yuri can still, at nineteen, execute a perfect Biellmann. 

At the other end of the barre, Lilia is scolding one of Yakov’s junior skaters, who looks close to tears as he goes through the positions while Lilia pokes and prods. 

“Heels together, toes apart! Keep your feet on the floor. I’ve seen better turnout in five year olds!”

Otabek waits by the door, not wanting to intrude on the practice more than he already has. There’s a certain strain to the arch of Yuri’s leg that he can see now, but he holds the position until Lilia tells him to stop. When he comes out of the penché, he sees Otabek, leaning against the door, and his eyes widen for a moment. 

What a difference eight years can make. That Yuri never spared Otabek more than a single glance, didn’t even remember him after. This Yuri never takes his eyes off Otabek as he stretches at the barre to wind down, seemingly perfect and untouchable—a porcelain doll left behind protective glass. Otabek, though, still gets to touch. 

He waits until the practice comes to an end and then while Yuri changes out of his practice clothes. Lilia, meanwhile, watches him with scrutiny as he patiently waits for Yuri to finish up, shifting her attention from the junior skater left to suffer at the barre for the moment. 

For all that Yuri and Otabek have been together for the past couple of years, he can count the number of conversations he’s had with Lilia on one hand. They don’t dislike each other, but by some unspoken agreement, they keep at a distance. It’s not that strange, all things considered, when the only point of convergence is Yuri. 

Otabek has no desire to go back to ballet training. Lilia has strong convictions about the place of ballet in a skater’s off-ice regimen. 

There’s nothing for them to talk about.

“Let’s go,” Yuri says finally, pulling Otabek by the forearm when he doesn’t move immediately. He shakes it off and turns, takes a step forward. Yuri, never looking back, throws a hand in the air. “See you, Lilia!”

“Have a good day, Lilia Anatolyevna,” Otabek says politely before letting himself be dragged toward the front exit.

 

“I’m fucking starving,” Yuri says, walking out of the studio into the bright light of the day. Otabek’s car is parked around the corner, a few minutes’ walk from the studio. It’s a miracle he even managed to snag that parking space; Saint Petersburg during rush hour is a nightmare. 

“I cooked,” Otabek informs him as he pauses in the middle of the sidewalk to fish the phone out of his pocket and checks his messages. One from Guillaume, thanking him for emailing a copy of today’s practice, to let him go over the adjustments they made with Polina. One from a costume designer Polina recommended, asking to set up a meeting to talk over ideas for his costumes for the upcoming season. And one from Dina, on vacation in Dubrovnik, tanned and laughing, her hair swept away by the wind. “But you’re doing the dishes.”

Otabek doesn’t need to look up to know that Yuri is rolling his eyes, his expression sour. 

“Ugh, fine,” he says, like the mere existence of dirty dishes waiting to be washed offends Yuri on some fundamental level. It’s not even like he needs to do them by hand. Otabek has a dishwasher; all Yuri needs to do is load it up. “But then I’m playing _Overwatch_ until I drop and your old-man bedtime routine is not gonna stop me.”

They’re clearing the table when Otabek notices there’s a certain stiffness to the way Yuri holds himself—a reminder of the rigorous training he puts himself through on a daily basis. 

He’s lucky. At nineteen, he has no serious injuries to his name, no past surgeries—scheduled or unplanned. There are not many skaters at their level who get this far without pushing their bodies past their capabilities, without slipping up in some way, without having a moment of bad luck that leaves them bedridden for weeks and away from the ice for months.

But Yuri can be reckless in his determination, and now that Otabek sees it up close every day, it’s at the same time an object of envy and a cause for concern. 

“Come on.” Otabek pulls Yuri into the bedroom before he can fire up the PlayStation, then pulls out the mat. “We should stretch.”

Yuri, reluctantly, goes. 

They stretch together side by side for a while and Otabek watches Yuri lean into a split that would leave him in pain halfway through like it’s nothing. But when they switch positions and Otabek presses Yuri’s knee to his chest, hovering above him, Yuri hisses. Otabek lets go.

“Sore?” he asks while Yuri grits his teeth. “I noticed you were walking funny earlier.” A pause. “Yura, _no_ ,” he adds, faux-stern, when Yuri opens his mouth with a look in his eye that spells trouble.

“What?” he asks, feigning innocence. “You could at least give me a better reason than Lilia. Come on, again. Just go slow.”

Otabek obliges, hiding the laughter that escapes him in the crook of his elbow before he grips Yuri’s leg and positions it against his shoulder and chest. This time he leans in even slower, his fingers splayed against the strained muscles in Yuri’s thigh, until Yuri sighs and sinks into the stretch. 

“You can go a bit lower,” he says. He looks up at Otabek from the mat, his lips bitten red. 

If Otabek leaned into it just a little bit more, they could kiss. He moves, then, and hovers with his lips just above Yuri’s mouth, just barely out of reach. 

“You goddamn tease,” Yuri spits out, craning his neck up as Otabek moves away, smothering a self-satisfied smile. In retaliation, Yuri brushes his calf against Otabek’s cock in a way that can’t be accidental.

“Are we stretching or fucking?” Otabek asks sternly, keeping his composure even as Yuri keeps trying to drive him insane. It’s good to remind Yuri from time to time that he’s not the only one with iron will and dogged perseverance in this relationship.

Yuri slides his leg off Otabek’s shoulder, then wraps his thighs around Otabek’s waist and pulls him forward. At the last second, Otabek catches himself on his elbows.

“Both. Either. I don’t know,” Yuri says. His smile has a sharp edge to it. “You tell me.”

They move, their mouths almost touching, and Yuri hisses. “Shit, okay,” he says. “Maybe stretching. We can fuck after.”

 

“You should see a professional about it,” Otabek says later, working the ointment into the backs of Yuri’s thighs. He’s sitting on his calves while Yuri lies stretched out on the sofa, playing an involved game on his phone that includes jelly-jumping and swearing profusely.

“It’s nothing,” Yuri says dismissively. “I’ve had worse.”

Otabek works the heels of his palms into Yuri’s muscle just to make a point. Yuri hisses, then throws him a dirty look over his shoulder. 

“Don’t be an idiot,” Otabek says, going back to working on Yuri’s muscles, and Yuri scoffs but doesn’t say anything. “You’re not getting any younger. You won’t be getting away with this forever. You’re not fifteen anymore.”

When Yuri throws the phone down on the couch cushion and twists back furiously, it feels like Otabek has missed a step somewhere in this conversation. There’s a funny, hollow feeling in his stomach. 

“What the hell is your deal? Who are you, my mother?” he spits it out like it’s an insult. “I’ve been managing just fine before you moved here.” He stares Otabek down, daring him to say anything. Otabek remains silent. “I don’t need you to fucking baby me. I’m not a goddamn moron.”

Otabek unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Then stop acting like one and go see a goddamn professional about this strain,” he says. “Unless you want to end your career before you’re twenty.” 

He can see the way Yuri almost shakes with all he’s barely keeping inside, his mouth a thin line. From the other side of the couch, Otabek observes the rapid rise and fall of his chest. 

“I’m going to shower,” he says.

He half-expects Yuri to get his things and leave, but he doesn’t hear the front door open and close even once he’s in the shower, scrubbing his hair with possibly more force than necessary.

It’s not their first argument—far from it—but it’s the first time there’s an implicit understanding that they’re expected to share the same space even before they make up. In the past, the majority of their arguments have taken place over the phone or Skype. This time, there’s no screen to hide behind, no way to sign off until they both cool down. It’s not like Otabek didn’t expect this, but now that it happened, it has left him more off-balance than he thought he would be.

He’s rinsing off the body wash when the bathroom door opens. He feels it rather than hears it; all of a sudden, there’s a draft coming in from the hallway that makes Otabek shiver. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees Yuri standing in the doorway, but the humidity that fogs up the walls of the shower obscures his vision. From this distance, it’s hard to tell if Yuri is here to keep fighting or to make up. 

“In or out?” Otabek asks tersely when Yuri still doesn’t move. “I’m naked in here.”

Yuri snorts, but closes the door behind him. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Otabek turns his face back towards the spray. “Was there anything you needed?” he asks. He won’t let himself be baited into continuing the argument, even though Yuri has managed to turn baiting into an art form.

There’s no answer, but over the low splash of water against the tile, Otabek can hear the rustle of fabric, a zipper being pulled down. Stubbornly, he stays with his back to Yuri. 

After a short moment, the glass door to the shower opens and the cold air hits Otabek’s skin, gooseflesh rising on his arms. He turns back to face Yuri, who’s standing in front of him, naked, his hair partially pulled out of the messy braid.

“Yes?” Otabek asks, even though he has an inkling as to where this is going. 

Instead of responding, Yuri shoulders his way into the shower and pushes Otabek against the wall until he has him pinned. Then he kisses him. The kiss is a clash of lips and teeth, desperate in the way Yuri scrambles to get a purchase on Otabek’s hair to move them even closer together. Otabek sinks his fingers into Yuri’s braid and closes his fist around a handful of hair. Yuri hisses into the kiss.

After a moment, he pulls away, his lips pink and thoroughly kissed. He looks somewhere halfway between pissed off and turned on, and it’s been a while since Otabek last saw him like this. What he’s learned over the past two years is that with Yuri, not everything is always a fight. But some things, apparently, still are. 

Without breaking the eye contact, Yuri reaches for Otabek’s dick. He misses by a few centimeters, closes his hand around thin air, surprised. Otabek almost laughs.

“Shut up,” Yuri tells him, even though Otabek hasn’t said anything. “Usually it’s _up_ when I’m handling it. What, am I suddenly not hot enough for you, asshole?”

“You barged in on me. How about you give me at least two seconds,” Otabek says and his voice doesn’t hitch even when Yuri’s fingers finally wrap around Otabek’s cock and push back the foreskin. “And I thought we had that conversation already.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Yuri says. 

He moves to go to his knees but Otabek holds him in place with a hand against the nape of Yuri’s neck. They’re not quiet and they’re not slow when they kiss; Yuri makes a sound deep in his throat when Otabek wraps his hand around both of them, covering Yuri’s knuckles with his palm.

It’s frantic and desperate, and over fast, leaving them breathing rapidly against each other in the humid air filling the shower. Otabek feels like he’s just finished three free programs in a row.

“I’ll see the goddamn physiotherapist,” Yuri says with his mouth millimeters from Otabek’s lips. 

Otabek leans forward and catches Yuri’s lower lip between his teeth, pulling until they break apart. “Good,” he says. His voice has gone all raspy. He clears his throat. “ _Good_.”

As far as conflict resolution strategies go, he thinks, this one is not so bad.

 

The day before Victor’s arrival in Russia, Otabek finds Yuri at the rink long after his regular practice has ended. At the entrance, he greets the elderly receptionist who knows him well enough to just wave him in, pointing to the rink.

“He’s still in there,” she says, shaking her head. “Yakov Semyonovich has left over an hour ago.”

Otabek goes through the locker room and stops on his way to lace up his skates. When he gets rinkside, Yuri is at the other end of the ice, picking up speed for his triple axel. It’s a beautiful, clean landing and then Yuri launches into the quad toe. He gets the rotations in, but he comes out of it shaky, puts his free leg down before he falls.

“ _Fuck_!”

Otabek skates out onto the ice.

“They posted Grand Prix assignments while you’ve been here,” he says, cutting straight to the point. He half-suspects that Yuri already knows, but if he’s lost the track of time, he might have missed the moment the ISU posted the assignments on their website.

Yuri skates towards him, his mouth a tight line. “And?” he asks. “What did we get?”

“I got Skate Canada and Cup of China. You got Rostelecom Cup and Trophée de France.”

Yuri nods. “JJ?”

“Don’t worry, he’s doing Skate Canada and NHK Trophy.”

“Good,” Yuri says solemnly. “You can crush him at Skate Canada. Georgi?”

Otabek shakes his head. “Just Challenger Series.”

At that, Yuri seems to visibly deflate. There has been speculation that this season might be Georgi’s last, and the not entirely unexpected demotion to the Challenger Series might be what finally pushes him to retire. 

It’s interesting to see how much the skating landscape can change in just a few seasons. There used to be a time when the Russians dominated men’s singles, with Victor reigning undefeated for years, Georgi, who’d learned to hold his own even in Victor’s all-encompassing shadow, and Yuri, who was expected to carry on the legacy. Now, there’s only Yuri left, and he’s breathtaking and otherworldly on the ice, but he’s not impossible to beat. There is no wiring running just beneath the surface of his skin, only flesh and bone. 

Yuri is human just like the rest of them. Otabek should know.

“Shit,” Yuri says eventually. “Looks like it’s just you and me, now.”

He can’t begrudge Otabek wanting the gold. Deep down, they all understand the drive, the insatiable hunger for winning. Now it feels like it’s finally his time, his opportunity to get out there and grab it, and not let it go out of his grasp.

It’s a change of guard, a change of the old order—with Victor and Yuuri gone, with Christophe retired and Georgi most probably on his way to retire. The end of an era; the end of history as they know it.

Now it’s just Yuri and him, and Otabek is not even Russian. Now Otabek has a quad flip, a better choreography and a hope for a higher PCS; Yuri has a triple axel-quad toe-triple toe combination that he can’t land yet, but once he does, he will get this much closer to unstoppable. Otabek needs to catch up before that happens.

“Come on,” he says, his fingers closed gently around Yuri’s wrist. 

Yuri shakes his head. There’s determination in his eyes, his shoulders rigid and his back unnaturally straight. It’s tension, coiled just beneath his skin like a spring. 

“I need to land this,” he says stubbornly. 

_I need to land this before Victor arrives_ is what goes without saying. Otabek, from where he’s standing, couldn’t even begin to unwrap this weird relationship that Yuri and Victor have—part-familial, part-antagonistic, part-something else. Victor is not quite the older brother Yuri’s never had, and he’s not quite the mentor to Yuri’s protégé, and he’s not quite a rival, but he’s also all of these things, together, jumbled in a mess of conflicting feelings.

“You will,” Otabek says with conviction and watches as Yuri looks up at him with surprise. He still favors his left leg, the muscle strain persisting despite the PT sessions. “You will,” he repeats, “but you don’t need to do it now. It’s not a weakness to need time.”

For a moment, it looks like Yuri is gearing up for a fight, but then his shoulders hunch forward and he exhales, closing his eyes. 

“Okay,” he says and takes Otabek’s hand. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to, come say hi on [tumblr](http://idrilka.tumblr.com) :)


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